"Based on science, what is wrong with slavery?..."

SkyWriting said:

Moses in on the record as working to eliminate slavery. He is also on the record as working to eliminate divorce.
He is also on record to eliminate death. But he still allowed people to die. And even was involved in a death.

Click to expand...

True. But God (and Moses) allowed for things they really did not want or sought to limit; made necessary due to the fallen nature of men. Think of it as a plan B allowed and approved by God if the original intent was not working out.

Goonie said:

The quote was dealing with the idea that biblical slavery was any different from slavery of the 18th and 19th centuries, which as the quotes demonstrate is not the case. I was not claiming that passage to support debt bondage.

I absolutely agree that debt bondage is as the name suggests still slavery.

Click to expand...

Yet some here are trying to expand Debt Bondage to mean any situation where one has to repay their debts.

Socio-economic conditions encompass a wide range of conditions and there is usually a continuum that makes determining just where to draw the lines difficult. In theory there is a line between Debt Bondage and Slavery, the line being that in the former there is a debt to discharge and once that is done the person is free. Again in theory there is a line between Debt Bondage and simply owing something, that line being who controls the actions of the debtor while the debt is not discharged. In theory, one can question just which side of that line one is on when they 'owe their soul to the company store'. I doubt there is anyone here who can point to a company store in that sense in modern America or Western Europe.

BTW my understanding is that slavery in the tobacco south was pretty close to biblical slavery.

keith99 said:

Yet some here are trying to expand Debt Bondage to mean any situation where one has to repay their debts.

Socio-economic conditions encompass a wide range of conditions and there is usually a continuum that makes determining just where to draw the lines difficult. In theory there is a line between Debt Bondage and Slavery, the line being that in the former there is a debt to discharge and once that is done the person is free. Again in theory there is a line between Debt Bondage and simply owing something, that line being who controls the actions of the debtor while the debt is not discharged. In theory, one can question just which side of that line one is on when they 'owe their soul to the company store'. I doubt there is anyone here who can point to a company store in that sense in modern America or Western Europe.

BTW my understanding is that slavery in the tobacco south was pretty close to biblical slavery.

Click to expand...

Yep, I think the closest we have to debt bondage in modern times, are those horror stories of migrants made to work of their 'debts' to people traffickers. And possibly the use of prison labour in the United States. A mortgage is not debt bondage.

Goonie said:

A mortgage is not debt bondage.

Click to expand...

Prov 22.7 The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.

DaveW-Ohev said:

Prov 22.7 The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.

Click to expand...

The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower isservant to the lender.

- King James Bible "Authorized Version", Cambridge Edition
Not all bibles agree on the issue. As has been pointed out

keith99 said:

in theory there is a line between Debt Bondage and simply owing something, that line being who controls the actions of the debtor while the debt is not discharged. In theory, one can question just which side of that line one is on when they 'owe their soul to the company store'.

Click to expand...

Based on Science, what was wrong with Slavery??

Like asking me based on Molecular gastronomy, what was wrong with the Berlin Wall?

Goonie said:

The quote was dealing with the idea that biblical slavery was any different from slavery of the 18th and 19th centuries, which as the quotes demonstrate is not the case. I was not claiming that passage to support debt bondage.

I absolutely agree that debt bondage is as the name suggests still slavery.

Click to expand...

Ah, sorry. My sarcasm meter was damaged when my irony meter blew years ago....

LOVEthroughINTELLECT said:

But apparently (I don't know for sure; I have not read their work) people linker Pinker, Sam Harris, etc.--people being associated with scientism--are asserting that science can lead us to what is morally good.

Click to expand...

Sam Harris has certainly implied that science alone can lead us to what is morally good. Of course, he's an idiot.

The case with Pinker, I don't know about, but if you look at the quote of Pinker in the OP story that leads up to quote used as the subject head of this thread:


Pinker seems to be explicitly setting aside the case of slavery as being outside the bounds of the moral goods (gifts) that science has given us. So it seems the National Review author's rhetorical question seems to be just that... rhetoric.

LOVEthroughINTELLECT said:

But apparently (I don't know for sure; I have not read their work) people linker Pinker, Sam Harris, etc.--people being associated with scientism--are asserting that science can lead us to what is morally good.

The quote was basically someone responding to such scientism saying, "Yeah, well, then based on science there is nothing wrong with slavery".

Click to expand...

Well, it's a rather poorly thought out quote...science makes no determination on the right and wrong of anything, let alone slavery.

LOVEthroughINTELLECT said:

If it wasn't science, what led to the abolition of slavery and the defeat of fascism?

And one could argue that science contributed to maintaining the institution of slavery and to the rise of fascism through things like creating racial categories, developing new technology for military use, etc.

Click to expand...

In slavery's case, I'd say economics. In fascism's case, I'd say war.

LOVEthroughINTELLECT said:

It is a response to Pinker's Science Is Not Your Enemy.

Click to expand...

Is it though? From my reading of it, Smith's op ed is attacking a strawman that Pinker never even attempted to erect. Pinker isn't arguing for scientism in the National Review's/Smith's sense of the world. He's arguing exactly against those who would use the term as a rallying call for anti-intellectualism and oppose policies based on a reasoned consideration of the evidence for "all areas of human concern, including politics, the arts, and the search for meaning, purpose, and morality". He's re-purposing the word for better usage.

LOVEthroughINTELLECT said:

It is basically saying that if, as the champions of scientism seem to believe, we ought to let science lead us to what is morally good then science could be used to justify slavery.

Click to expand...

Pinker's article mentions slavery twice. One as an example of "obstacles we set in our own path", with the other example being fascism. The second time in his observation that science is being demonised and impugned for "crimes that are as old as civilization", along wit including racism, slavery, conquest, and genocide. That's his point, science has valuable contributions to make to understanding ALL aspects of the world, gaining knowledge is difficult and gainsaying this does a disservice to mankind.

And yes, you can make moral decisions, even about slavery, on information gleaned through science. Science doesn't make the moral decisions though, people do.Based on the best available information. Which science continues to make better, and more available.

Moses taught Israel to hate the ways the Egyptians treated them onwards.

Science does not have a vision statement to compare against the concepts in slavery.

There are home truths and political truths. You might try to derive dedutively the political truths from home truths. And get lost in the haze. But focus on the home truth, and you will see more clearly from a deductive perspective.

Theres a difference between deductive laws of nature and inductive ones. The home truths (like flourishing is good) are close up, proximate to the agent.

"The strength of a nation depends on the integrity of its home" IIRC (Chinese maxim). A strong home can be seen clearly, deductively. A broken leg is a broken leg etc. That is bad, harmful.

The inductive rules are "probablistic", like slavery is to be avoided, and their truth is more hazey and distant.

You cant analyse a complex, chaotic system - i.e. a society, a collective mass -- and predict the part's "states of affairs" (morally or ethically speaking, like the well being of agents) exactly. Thats why politics, and its utility, and much of normative ethics is inductive from a secular perspective.

But this doesnt mean you cant know, if you focus close up on the indicvidual, and their proximate embedded network (social aesthetic economic etc), that someone is flourishing, healthy or content etc. You can, and you can know deductively, just from a read off of a 23rd centrury non-invasive multidimensional electro chemical brain transect, and a look at the number of well kept gardens on the block etc.

GoldenKingGaze said:

Moses taught Israel to hate the ways the Egyptians treated them onwards.

Click to expand...

Really? By allowing them to buy slaves from other nations? Or being able to beat their slaves as long as they don't die within a day?

Must be a different version of hate you are using then what I know about.

LOVEthroughINTELLECT said:

"Based on science, what is wrong with slavery? It’s just the powerful prevailing over and forcing their way on the less powerful–a common feature of the natural world..." (emphasis mine).

Source: Pinker's Confused Defense of Scientism.

Click to expand...

of course there is none and that is why all atheistic leftists regimes, nations and countries turn into giant death camps. with the highest number death tolls ever.

Ana the Ist said:

The page linked wouldn't load up for me. Regardless...

I don't see what one has to do with the other. Science, as far as I know, doesn't intersect with the field of morality. As other posters have pointed out...they're completely unrelated

Click to expand...

Well I think that was the point of the topic wasn't it? That science cannot answer questions of morality?

There are some prominent atheist scientists though that are insistent science can answer every question.

LOVEthroughINTELLECT said:

"Based on science, what is wrong with slavery?

Click to expand...

Does it matter?